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What if you aren't lazy? What if you're willing and able to work, but can't, because nobody will hire you?

Do you simply die?

Air, food, water, shelter should all be basic human rights. Deny any of those and you are effectively killing someone. I always wondered why we protect "basic human rights" like free speech, freedom of religion and such... but we don't protect freedom of staying alive.

I disagree slightly. Free speech is important; we can't barter and exchange without it. Since society is meant to be diverse, we aren't all subsistence farmers; some of us are builders, craftsmen, etc.

Free speech guarantees the right that we can choose to exchange our services with whoever we want so long as it is fair.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zakoo

ie, the system is correct, why bother making it better?

Efficient you mean. If a maid can serve and cook, why bother if she pads and lies about her breast size or not?

Nothing is perfect in this world. We can only strive to improve, starting from square one just unrealistic.

__________________

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

A pointless debate, we all agree there's malnutrishment, but who cares, it's their fault if they are sick, they just had to not be in war or poverty.

Yet we are the one solding weapons, and their poverty is a direct consequence of Europe past actions. Now that we all agreed with Leibniz philosophy, everything is fine in the best world possible, let's pass on something else.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Looking for broader remedies to gun violence, Vice President Joe Biden is reaching out to the video game industry for ideas as the White House seeks to assemble proposals in response to last month's massacre at a Connecticut elementary school.

Biden is scheduled to meet with video game representatives Friday as the White House explores cultural factors that may contribute to violent behavior.

What if you aren't lazy? What if you're willing and able to work, but can't, because nobody will hire you?

Do you simply die?

I understand this viewpoint, after all I'm finding it difficult to find work myself. That's why I think it is important to have unemployment benefits of some kind.

But the issue in this case is not provision of food/shelter, it's ensuring everyone has access to work. On the flipside, overly generous unemployment subsidies can sometimes be counterproductive, and I don't mean in creating "welfare queens" (I don't think most unemployed are like this), but more that if they're comfortable they might not be willing to take such radical steps as moving to another part of the country, which might be necessary to achieve employment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zakoo

ie, the system is correct, why bother making it better?

The system is correct, but inefficient. As someone else posted, it's more about improving the wheel, then switching to something completely different. Evolution, rather then Revolution.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zakoo

A pointless debate, we all agree there's malnutrishment, but who cares, it's their fault if they are sick, they just had to not be in war or poverty.

Yet we are the one solding weapons, and their poverty is a direct consequence of Europe past actions. Now that we all agreed with Leibniz philosophy, everything is fine in the best world possible, let's pass on something else.

I don't think any posters are saying it's their own fault for living in a war torn country. People are just saying that you have to deal with the causes of malnutrition at the source, and in most cases that "source" is not the agricultural industry. The source is the war. If there's malnutrition in a country riven by civil war, the solution is try to bring the civil war to an end, not to revolutionize agriculture in that nation(or elsewhere). For one thing, any improvements you might make in that country would be quickly undone by the next rebel band that marches through and pillages all the farmer's hard work away.

In most cases, Hunger is a more of a symptom of deeper dysfunctions in a region. Today it's quite rare for out of control crop failures/natural disasters to cause famine, and even then a functional government will be able to deal with those problems (Think Japan after the Tsunami) while a dysfunctional one will just fall apart (think Haiti after it's earthquake).

Fundamentally, today Hunger is more a political problem, rather then an agricultural or logistical problem.

When three puppygirls named after pastries are on top of each other, it is called Eclair a'la menthe et Biscotti aux fraises avec beaucoup de Ricotta sur le dessus.
Most of all, you have to be disciplined and you have to save, even if you hate our current financial system. Because if you don't save, then you're guaranteed to end up with nothing.

I disagree slightly. Free speech is important; we can't barter and exchange without it. Since society is meant to be diverse, we aren't all subsistence farmers; some of us are builders, craftsmen, etc.

Free speech guarantees the right that we can choose to exchange our services with whoever we want so long as it is fair.

Keeping it fair is the big issue here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Efficient you mean. If a maid can serve and cook, why bother if she pads and lies about her breast size or not?

And this is exactly what I'm talking about. Competence should be the only metric involved in determining a person's fitness to perform a task. Your hypothetical maid should be hired for her (or his) skill at cooking, cleaning, maintaining the household and managing everything that goes on inside.

They should not be hired for their bust size, or their pretty face, or the way their rear end looks when they bend over at the waist, or fired for the color of her skin, her sexual orientation or gender identity.

Fundamentally, today Hunger is more a political problem, rather then an agricultural or logistical problem.

Exactly, even if we can double the output of food production tomorrow, it's still not going to solve the hunger problem, even if we send all the food they need to places like N. Korea or countries in Africa, nothing much will change, other than the size of the pocketbook and warehouses of the dictators or warlords in charge, every one else is still gonna go hungry.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Well at least someone is making a sensible move on this finally.

Which move are you talking about? I certainly didn't see much there that's sensible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Keeping it fair is the big issue here.

Unfortunately, human society is inherently unfair, while it's something we can certainly strive for, I don't see it as a realistically achievable goal.

Unless we all reach enlightenment and ascend into a higher plane of existence or something

Exactly, even if we can double the output of food production tomorrow, it's still not going to solve the hunger problem, even if we send all the food they need to places like N. Korea or countries in Africa, nothing much will change, other than the size of the pocketbook and warehouses of the dictators or warlords in charge, every one else is still gonna go hungry.

Yes, though with the caveat that with diminishing resources it could become a real agricultural issue in the future.

For instance, I highly doubt this planet could feed 14 billion people without further technological advance. We've got certain parts of the world running out of water, and of course oil/global warming being a factor as well.

I'm not about to cry doom on these things though, I think we should be able to tackle these problems so long as we don't all do something stupid like ban all fertilizers, pesticides and high yield crops.

More like "the system means we don't starve. Let's not replace it with one that means we will".

Imperfect as the present state is, it doesn't justify more than incremental improvements. A complete, brutal revolution would be an unconscionable risk. Emulating what's proven to kill the population would be outright evil.

Quote:

Originally Posted by synaesthetic

And this is exactly what I'm talking about. Competence should be the only metric involved in determining a person's fitness to perform a task. Your hypothetical maid should be hired for her (or his) skill at cooking, cleaning, maintaining the household and managing everything that goes on inside.

They should not be hired for their bust size, or their pretty face, or the way their rear end looks when they bend over at the waist, or fired for the color of her skin, her sexual orientation or gender identity.

"Competence" is more complicated and covers more than merely technical proficiency. There's nothing uncommon about expecting a maid to be decorative (indeed, that's a big part of the job of maids in maid cafes...).

Meh everybody protect its own interest, for United States it's petrol for France it's uranium. Having a bunch a invisible unicorn believer coming from Algeria and as a consequence hating france in power would have hurt the wallet. Not only the wallet.

Probably the French have interests over there, but we also saw Belgian troops in the past too being sent in neighboring countries. However, I am quite surprised the Brits didn't do much militarily in Africa since Sierra Leone in 2000 and considering that a big chunk of Africa used to be in the British Empire. Oh, well... perhaps former British colonies are just more disciplined overall or they just simply don't give a damn... which would be surprising considering how some of the Royals are investing into this with humanitarian purposes.

^Britain doesn't seem to share France's general policy of militarily intervening in the former colonial empire in Africa. They prefer to work through the Commonwealth, if at all. Not that I think they expect to achieve anything with that -- witness the case of Zimbabwe and how easily the likes of Mugabe ignore and even withdraw from the Commonwealth.

The French people here on this forum should be able to tell us better what's up with this particular brand of French policy. Gaullist legacy? Something for the Foreign Legion to do? Even the Socialist Hollande doesn't seem to be particularly interested in changing the status quo...

French have always intervened a lot in their former colonies. Some call it "neo-colonialism", the French still get the resource benefits, but they no longer have the expense or bad publicity of running these countries...

There's been a lot of dubious stuff the french have done in Africa. And if an African ruler tries to totally break ties with France, he usually doesn't last long, consider the case of Thomas Sankara.